Industry Knowledge / Product management

What do product managers do?

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“What’s your day-to-day like?” is another common question I get when asked about working in games and tech as a product manager. It’s such a broad and complex question that I usually have to ask a few clarifying questions in return before digging in. Don’t worry, I’ll dig into what I do day-to-day below, but let’s break down this question a bit to figure out what people may be looking for a bit deeper within the answer.

So the first clarifying question I might ask is: What are you looking to learn about the product manager day-to-day?

Here’s what people say:

  • “I want to figure out if I’ll like it”
  • “I want to know what’s expected of me as a PM”
  • “I’m trying to figure out how involved the role is in development”
  • “I heard you get to do a bit of everything (design, engineering, business analysis, etc.) – is that true?”

That helps narrow down what people are looking for, so I’ll dig into these questions below by giving you a way to figure out the answer yourself while also giving clear examples of what day-to-day life may look like. Remember, product managers adapt to their environment so your mileage may vary depending on the type of team you’re on, the product you’re working on, or the size of your company.

Will you like being a PM?

First, I can’t tell you what you’ll like. I love chocolate chip cookies. If you don’t like them, I’ll be disappointed at most, but won’t force you to like it. That’s your choice to be sad and not like chocolate chip cookies… Second, if I confirmed what you like in my explanation here, I might be confirming a bias and setting you up for disappointment. Be careful when asking questions like this to gauge whether you’ll like something or not. Getting answers from others may sway you in too many directions or point you down the wrong path due to someone’s unique experience.

If you want to figure out whether you’ll like something as a job, it’s best to give it a go outside of the job or as a hobby. So, what are some things you can do today? Fair notice: Don’t give this a “try” and partially do this. Go all-in if you really want to find out whether this role is for you. After all…

Taking a shot at being a PM through personal experimentation (Solo mode)

  • Think about a problem you want to solve in your day-to-day. Let’s say you don’t have time to make coffee in the morning before you go to school or work.
  • Start with research
    • Are you the only one with this problem? Surely not, so go learn about how others are dealing with it.
    • Get a few interviews in with friends at school or work and ask them about their morning routine and how they fit (or don’t) coffee into it. Dig in especially with people that really have this problem and don’t have a great solve for it. Take notes.
    • Gather the different types of people you see within your notes and identify their coffee needs. Identify if/ how they solve for getting coffee in the morning quickly since time is the issue.
  • Assess potential solutions yourself
    • List existing solutions along with some that you think of. Some examples below:
      • Brew your own cold brew or buy some and keep it in the fridge. Grab-and-go!
      • Try methods of speeding up the brewing process such as pre-ground beans (sry) or instant coffee.
      • Automate the process by setting up a smart device that schedules coffee to be brewed. There’s an obvious expense here. Research can be expensive so you might want to identify a few friends that have these systems setup already and ask them about it.
      • Mix instant coffee into your protein shake/ smoothie.
    • Try them out over a few days/ weeks to see which you like best.
  • Test with your research interview group
    • Have a few people that you interviewed try out your favorite way to get coffee quickly in the morning. If you have a larger group doing this with you, have a few people try the top 2-3 methods.
  • Pitch a solution to the problem – yes, this is your product launch!
    • Pick the coffee method that you think the interview group would adopt the most.
    • Pitch the group in shifting to the new method.
  • Gather usage data
    • Give them 1-2 weeks and ask them again whether they kept up with the new method or reverted/ tried something new.
    • Gather that data and see how successful you were in getting adoption of your promoted coffee method.
  • Optimize or pivot
    • Were your adoptions high with only a few stragglers? Can you optimize your coffee method to get them onboard? Try it.
    • Did you gain little adoption or retention where people stopped trying and went back to their old method? Pivot onto another solution.

Well? How was it? Do you think you could do that, but with a team of cross-functional experts in the fields of design, engineering, analytics, etc.? After reading this far, you should now see the complexity of answering what a PM does day-to-day. It could be any of the above or a mix of all of it for various products… and I love it. This is what I love about product management. You’re involved, accountable, and able to drive solutions to real problems, see users interact with the solutions, and decide what to do next with your team.

Experimenting as a PM within a team

You aren’t likely to be soloing every phase of development above in the real-world, so if you want to replicate what it’s like working with in the most common setup in development today, take a group of people along for the ride.

If you go with a group, there are a few rules:

  1. Don’t tell people what to do – aim convince them it’s the right thing to do.
  2. Have a person in your group act as a stakeholder that simply cares whether you solve the problem or not.
  3. Have a person in the group act as an investor that simply cares whether you gain adoption and retention.
  4. Assign a design leader that handles the research. Work with them and soak up all the info from the interviews. Take part in the interviews with them, but let them lead the conversation while you ask questions here and there.
  5. Assign a technical leader that digs into the different coffee brewing methods or ways to get coffee/ caffeine alternatively. Don’t tell them what to do – ask them what is possible. Represent the user that has the problem/ need and be them in the conversation with your technical leader.
  6. Attend all technical and design discussions where you can learn something or help clarify a user need.
  7. Take ownership and accountability for the solution pitch, data gathering, and decision to optimize or pivot. This doesn’t mean others can’t help – it simply means the results of those endeavors are on your shoulders.

Now apply those rules to the PM experiment above and see how you like it. If you really have some time on your hands, try a few groups with different problem spaces.

So, what did you think? This is a big ask, I know, but this is your career after all. Take it seriously and give things a shot before you invest a year into doing the above with a team if you have the chance to test it out with friends/ colleagues.

Thanks for making it all the way down here! Another common question I get is in my last blog post: Product, program, project, production – what’s the difference? Go check it out. GL HF!